Terry Liddle, 1948 – 2012, Comrade.

Terry Liddle died on November the 16/17 November 2012 aged 64 , after suffering ill health for a long time.

Many people on the left will have memories of Terry. There are those much more familiar with him than myself. A full obituary will be difficult to write. But this is one tribute to his memory.

I first became acquainted with Terry around 1979-1980, when he was involved in setting up an explicitly socialist atheist group. With my house-mate John, a cockney anarchist and shop steward at Warwick University, I joined. But living in Leamington Spa we had only written contact.

This group, according to the secularist anarchist Nicolas Walter, was bound to run into difficulties, as non-belief in religion takes many, often clashing, forms on the left. Indeed the organisation did not last. But Terry continued to place atheism, along with left democratic socialism and republicanism, at the centre of his politics.

Terry was, as they say, involved in many left wing groupings. In the Labour Briefing pamphlet Why Socialists Should Stay in the Labour Party (1991-2) he wrote with self-depreciating humour, “After a decade as an intransigent ultra-left sectarian, joining the Labour Party wasn’t easy. Staying in it is harder still.” But like other contributors (including myself) he placed his hopes in building a Labour left that would “work as a unified coherent force”. This would challenge the Party’s rightward drift, and give body to the “hopes and dreams of our class.”

The “long hard slog” of refounding the left led Terry, like many of us (such as the writer of the pamphlet’s introduction, Mike Marqusee, then Editor of the Briefing) outside the Labour Party.

A full history of these attempts to form a fully socialist party, principally in England, around the Socialist Alliance (SA), has yet to be written. Its derisory votes in the General Election of 2001 counted less towards it dissolution than the bandwagon launched by George Galloway and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) backed the Respect party.

The type of ‘vanguard’ Leninism offered by groups like the SWP never attracted Terry. Still less would he follow Galloway’s populist ‘anti-imperialism’, support for ‘Muslims’ and self-promotion, into Respect. His hostility, widely shared on the left, looks more than justified when we look at Respect’s present, sorry, state. Terry sought a different future for the left in democratic and robustly socialist groupings and networks.

Terry Liddle was anchored in the activist and intellectual traditions of the British left. His own family background included a grandfather who was a member of Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation (SDF). He had his forebear’s two volumes of Hyndman’s autobiography (The Record of an Adventurous Life, 1911 Further Reminiscences, 1911). An article on the heritage of William Morris illustrates the depth not just of his reading, but equally his easy familiarity with the heart of the historic labour movement and the left. As he wrote, “Morris belongs neither to Marxists, Anarchists or Greens. He belongs to all of toiling humanity, for his is a message of hope for their freedom.”

Terry entered left-wing politics early. His experiences in the Young Communist League (YCL) in South London (he told me they felt that us young North London leftists considered ourselves a bit ‘above’ them), left him a committed anti-Stalinist.

Terry was a Marxist. But it was the kind of democratic Marxism, which many of us believe in, which crosses over with other types of socialism, left libertarian thought, and anarchism. As such Terry kept alive two strands from the pre-Great War left, secularism, and republicanism. He was open to new, and different, ideas, from feminism to ecology. He was also an advocate of animal rights, relating this to the writings of 19th century socialist, Henry Salt, on the issue (Extending the Circle of Compassion What Next. No 29.2004).

This openness was illustrated in some of his last writing. This year he reviewed a collection of Colin Ward’s writings, (Autonomy, Solidarity Possibility – a Colin Ward Reader). He stated, after a friendly overview of the Editor of Anarchy’s ideas on “autonomous direct action”, “Anarchists are all too often seen as crusties in ragged black clothing with mangy dogs on strings or mindless nihilistic trouble makers. But anarchism has always been a part of the movement for working class self-emancipation. It has a long history and some important thinkers.” (Chartist July/August 2012).

I feel glad that I was able to tell Terry how much I appreciated this piece.

Atheism remained, as well, very much part of Terry Liddle’s outlook. he set up the Freethought History Research Group. He was active in the Humanists. He was supported the main thrust of French laïcité, particularly the ideas of the important left wing of French secularist thought and campaigning.

Terry wrote sympathetically on the ‘New Atheism’. He distinguished it from purists, like the National Secular Society, who are largely concerned with the separation of Church and State. Writers like Dawkins, Hitchens and Frank Harris were ‘science based’ and interested in arguing about the truth of faith. This was valuable, if with limits. While he was critical of Christopher Hitchen’s entrance into the “camp of imperialism” Terry had no time for those who have become “apologists for political Islam” (War on the Heavens. The Rise of ‘New Atheism and its Meaning for Socialists. New Interventions Vol. 13. No 4. 2011).

He commented, “While the New Atheism provides an arsenal of ammunition to hammer religion, to undermine the foundation of its mythology, it falls short in failing to describe or make an analysis of the ideological role played by religion in sustaining the alienated social relations of social relations of bourgeois society.” (Ibid) He cites FA Ridley, “Once a Communist order was fully established, the twin foundations of religion would be torn up by the roots.” (Ibid)

19 Responses

Lovely tribute, some time ago I posted a review of Poems To Shake The Walls Of Church and State, which included two of Terry’s poem, one calls on his comrades to raise a glass of wine or ale to his memory when he dies and is no more than a whiff of dust.

I don’t know if his pamphlet “The right to smoke – a socialist view” is available online anywhere; I hope it is, it’s still a great read, and typical of his fundamental, rooted anti-trendiness. He really was a thinker-activist of value to the whole of the left; you never needed to agree with him to find him valuable.

I knew Terry in his final decade through the Socialist History Society, and then also the Freethought History Research Group – which is still going, although losing Terry will make things a lot harder for us. Three things about his character stand out. 1. He had a wry and irreverent sense of humour, which made him very entertaining company. 2. He was completely sincere, even though he changed his mind quite radically more than once on certain questions (e.g. whether alcohol should be enjoyed or banned outright). 3. He was happy to kick ideas about, without trying to give you “the line”. He was in every respect a freethinker, and such people are all too rare.

Andrew – could we please repost your piece on the FHRG site, which we need to get up and running? Cheers.

You may have already heard this from another source but I am writing to let you know that Terry Liddle has passed away from a stroke. He was discovered in his flat on Monday morning having apparently died some time on Friday/Saturday. In spite of serious health problems, Terry had remained extremely active and I am sure it has come as a shock to all of us that we lost him so suddenly.

Terry had already charged me with making his funeral arrangements which I will be doing over the next week or so and I will let you know the details as soon as I know them. You have received this email because you were on a list Terry made of “folk to contact on my death” but if you do not want to receive any further information please let me know.”

Terry will be greatly missed. I knew him for many years, first when he joined the Thomas Paine Society, to the committee of which he was elected and remained a member until last year, when he decided not to stand for re-election on grounds of ill health. He continued to write for the society’s Journal of Radical History, the most recent issue of which carries a book review by him.

He wanted to move from his flat in Eltham to warden assisted accommodation, but the project fell through as he disliked what was offered – he turned up to inspect it to find many of the residents gathered for a prayer meeting. He had a passion for radical/political poetry, and wrote several articles on the subject, one of which the TPS published in March of this year. He also “flirted” with membership of the SPGB. One of his heroes was F.A.Ridley, and one of first publications of the Freethought History Research Group was a reprint of Ridley’s Socialism and Religion, that had originally been published by the Engels Society. I recall that when him and I met to discuss the proposed formation of the Freethought History Research Group he hoped that it would republish some of Ridley’s essays on religion, He also castigated the National Secular Society for their failure to reprint the marks of many 19th century freethinkers that he thought should be in print. I am happy to say that the FHRG has done just that.

Terry, it should be said, did neglect his health to some extent. As a diabetic he should not have consumed alcohol but did. He will be missed, but his memory will be kept alive by his published writings, which, I hope, will include his autobiography which he told me was near to completion. He was a good friend.
Robert Morrell.

I knew Terry slightly during the Socialist Alliance days and he represented a humanist, secularist, socialist belief that is under attack from many on the so-called left. Nice to see the many online tributes.

I have just heard of the news of Terry’s passing.
Terry was a man of the Left who saw the big picture: People, Planet and Animals.
He did much good work in the cause of making things better and he was an excellent writer.
I found him interesting and amusing.
I shall raise a glass to him now, with my supper.

My partner (Toby Abse) and I are sorry to hear of the death of Terry Liddle, we knew him quite well for years, and admired the breadth of his interests. One of his most endearing quirks was that he always dated his Christmas letters using the French Revolutionary months.

A suitably fine tribute to a man who had so many intriguing facets to his character, and to his life. As a former resident of Sowerby Close (for some 20 years), I often came upon Terry sitting on the little wall close to the block of flats where he lived. If time permitted, and I always tried to make it so, we’d engage in conversation. Terry was always so entertaining, witty, and insightful with his comments, and I always looked forward to meeting up with him and talking about our shared interests. People like him are always a one-off, and when they pass this world is always the poorer for their absence. Very sad to hear that he’s left us, and it was far too soon, in my opinion.

Just noticed this tribute to my late friend and comrade (through more than one political organisation) Terry Liddle. The piece gives a flavour of Terry’s eclectic political career through a myriad of Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, social-democrat, anarchist and environmentalist groups but, strangely, says little or nothing about the politics of the last decade or so of his life.

Although Terry was in numerous groups and parties (including the Labour Party and the Green Party) his longest political attachments were probably to the YCL-CP and two of its successors; the Green Socialist Network and the Alliance for Green Socialism, the latter being the only successor to the CPGB still active on the left. Terry had come to see that his earlier arguments for remaining in the Labour Party had become obsolete and he accepted the AGS view that the Labour Party was now irretrievably lost to progressive socialism and was now firmly and permanently entrenched in the pro-capitalist camp.

Terry was a founder member of the AGS in 2003 (when the GSN and the Left Alliance merged) and its National Committee, on which he served for some years until ill health and increasing immobility caused him to step down. He was also one of the AGS’s most active and respected political thinkers and writers, was the regular book reviewer in the AGS journal, ‘Green Socialist’ and was largely responsible for framing AGS policy on secularism and religion. He was less successful in trying to get the AGS to adopt his views on animal rights but his cogent and well argued points were listened to with respect and persuaded some.

Those who knew Terry well will recall that finding a space in his Eltham flat that was not full of books was not easy and he was one of the best read and ideologically well-informed people on the left. However, he was not just an intellectual and had done his share of street activism in his younger days when his health permitted. At a gathering of AGS members one older comrade recalled that when he had been gaoled for the Brighton Methodist Church demo at the 1966 Labour Party conference, Terry (then in the YCL I think) had been one of the people picketing Brixton prison and demanding the Wilson government drop the vindictive prosecution and imprisonment of peaceful protesters who had merely heckled self important politicians.and exposed their hypocrisy (over Vietnam).

Terry was a largely self-taught political thinker and the kind of person that the modern Labour Party holds in utter contempt, which is all the more reason to cherish the few people like him we have left.